Monday, January 31, 2005
archives
I've switched from weekly to monthly archives. Lord knows what this might do to searches that will hit things in the old archive files. But 2 years is too many weeks to list week-by-week. Hopefully the individual post pages are indexed by now anyway.
It might also mess up any links that anybody might have made to the archive pages.
It might also mess up any links that anybody might have made to the archive pages.
Mike Brantley's Super-8 Filmmaking Site
Via Brandon, who described it, "This is a site about 8mm run by the sort of deep expert you normally only find with Unix kernel programmers and model train enthusiasts."
Sunday, January 30, 2005
WREK - Schedule and Weekly Archive
We archive a whole week of WREK! Each show in the grid below is linked to WREK-Net's most recent MP3 archive of that show. So listen to your favorite show whenever you want to listen to it!
Saturday, January 29, 2005
Winter not-so-wonder land
Disco Kroger's disco ball
Friday, January 28, 2005
a different kind of rabbit ears
PRAVDA.Ru - Russian news and analysis
This is the Pravda? The official organ of propoganda and brainwashing from the Soviet days? Freedom does strange things. Check out these two headlines:
•Buttocks tell a lot of a person's sexuality and tempter
•Vodka saves man's life as he falls out of a window
•Buttocks tell a lot of a person's sexuality and tempter
•Vodka saves man's life as he falls out of a window
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Matt Groening Apple Ad
Coolest.Thing.Ever. This, and only this, is why I read the blogs of people I don't personally know.
Well, there's all the CSS and Java and crap like that. Don't forget that stuff.
Well, there's all the CSS and Java and crap like that. Don't forget that stuff.
Friday, January 21, 2005
The Little Wooly-Gig
This is the aforementioned eight-year-old-recorded grandpa speech, the story of the Little Wooly-Gig.
My grandfather was somewhat obsessed with the Sasquatch. He often told stories about having seen one while hunting cranes in the woods near Bayou La Batre. Eventually this stories changed from alleged eyewitness accounts to pure fiction that not only involved us grandkids but also a creature called the Wooly-Gig, which was a sort of smaller, friendly version of the Sasquatch. Sort of like an Eewok, I imagined.
The Wooly-Gig had some backstory that was not mentioned on the particular occasion that I had my tape recorder with me. He was raised by his mother after his father, a farmer who was too lazy to actually do any farming, ran off to go become a gambler (I distinctly remember that this story was the first time I heard anyone say "pinochle"). I do not know whether either of the Wooly-Gig's parents was a Wooly-Gig, or if they were humans and he was some sort of a freak. The Wooly-Gig had to become the man of the house at an early age and plow the fields until his hands became rough. Eventually the Big, Bad, Sasquatch started terrorizing the Wooly-Gig and his mother, and little Wooly decided to move away from his mother's house so that the Sasquatch would follow him and leave his mother alone.
My grandfather was somewhat obsessed with the Sasquatch. He often told stories about having seen one while hunting cranes in the woods near Bayou La Batre. Eventually this stories changed from alleged eyewitness accounts to pure fiction that not only involved us grandkids but also a creature called the Wooly-Gig, which was a sort of smaller, friendly version of the Sasquatch. Sort of like an Eewok, I imagined.
The Wooly-Gig had some backstory that was not mentioned on the particular occasion that I had my tape recorder with me. He was raised by his mother after his father, a farmer who was too lazy to actually do any farming, ran off to go become a gambler (I distinctly remember that this story was the first time I heard anyone say "pinochle"). I do not know whether either of the Wooly-Gig's parents was a Wooly-Gig, or if they were humans and he was some sort of a freak. The Wooly-Gig had to become the man of the house at an early age and plow the fields until his hands became rough. Eventually the Big, Bad, Sasquatch started terrorizing the Wooly-Gig and his mother, and little Wooly decided to move away from his mother's house so that the Sasquatch would follow him and leave his mother alone.
The Coming of the Cubes
Here are the lyrics for Coming of the Cubes, in all their 1993-ish glory.
The parts 4 and 5 that were on Flvxxvm Florvm is the Devil are the section below entitled "Disappointment" and an instrumental section that follows and isn't mentioned in the lyrics below.
"The Stoffonians" is the same music as the song This is How it Feels.
The complete work would have nine sections:
1. Opening (instrumental)
2. Question and Answer
3. Digging
4. Disappointment
5. Interim (instrumental)
6. The Stoffonians
7. The Battle
8. The Bar is Crossed
9. Closing (instrumental)
I remember someone telling me that the music I was writing for "Question and Answer" sounded like something that Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs would listen to.
The parts 4 and 5 that were on Flvxxvm Florvm is the Devil are the section below entitled "Disappointment" and an instrumental section that follows and isn't mentioned in the lyrics below.
"The Stoffonians" is the same music as the song This is How it Feels.
The complete work would have nine sections:
1. Opening (instrumental)
2. Question and Answer
3. Digging
4. Disappointment
5. Interim (instrumental)
6. The Stoffonians
7. The Battle
8. The Bar is Crossed
9. Closing (instrumental)
I remember someone telling me that the music I was writing for "Question and Answer" sounded like something that Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs would listen to.
***************************
* THE COMING OF THE CUBES *
***************************
by Jeffrey Robertson
voices :
Student (later Scientist)
Chorus of humanity
Stoffonians
--- Question and Answer ---
Student: Where do all the cubes come from ?
Chorus: Nobody knows, my son.
Student: Are the cubes all there is to earth ?
Chorus: As far as we have gone.
Student: What was there before the cubes ?
Chorus: We have no idea.
Student: How old are they, anyway ?
Chorus: They've always been here.
Student: What makes the bar around the earth ?
Chorus: We think it is the cubes.
Student: Why can't the bar be crossed by man ?
Chorus: We don't have a clue.
Student: I will be a scientist
a man who knows the truth
I will learn to cross the bar
and understand the cubes
Chorus: There are things that shouldn't be,
and things that can't be known
the secrets of the bar and cubes
are better left alone
Student: How will we ever leave the earth
if we never cross the bar ?
Chorus: Who would ever want to leave ?
We have so much right here !
Student: But what they had said that when
man still lived in the caves ?
Chorus: Speak no more your blasphemy
upon our fathers' graves !
Student: I won't bother with you more
you will not understand.
I'll not be a boy of yours
its time I was a man.
--- Digging ---
Scientist: I've been digging ever since
I left home months ago
to find whats underneath the cubes
and what I need to know.
For many days and nights I searched
deep beneath the ground
There's something strange within the earth
its strange, what I have found.
The earth is not made up of cubes
the cubes are just on top
inside its made of something else
the ancients called it "rocks"
I've found where the old ones lived
we thought they were a myth
but in a time before the cubes
such people really lived.
My search is almost reached its end
for what I want to know :
how did the cubes come about ?
and how to cross the bar ?
I've found a musty manuscript
in a long-forgotten toungue
but soon I will have cracked the code
and read the ancients' song.
--- Disappointment ---
Scientist: I have read the manuscript
I know how the cubes were made
A scientist invented them
He loved what he had made
They multiplied and multiplied
and over-ran the globe
and everything the ancients had
was buried by the cubes
Chorus: We told you so, yes we did
of things best left unknown
a foolish scientist like you
brought ruin to their home
Science you should never trust
and never trust the brain
for progress is fairy-tale
that brings us only pain.
Scientist: Enough ! I will not hear such things
I can't beleive its true
that nations that were once so great
were ruined by the cubes
There must be some good come of this
for I've still more yet to read
and how to cross the bar, my friends
of this I still have need.
Chorus: And know you never will, young fool
of things best left alone
you'll no more spoil the order now
we've come to take you home.
Forget your foolish manuscript
come back into the sun
there are many things to do at home
and much work to be done.
--- The Stoffonians ---
Scientist and Chorus: From the distant world of Ristkon
the Stoffonians, they came
with the flags of evil empire
for to put the earth in chains.
Worshipping their dark gods
in their starships long and curved
with their gamma bombs and lasers
to make all the humans serve.
They circled round our planet
and sent signals in all toungues
to the people of all countries,
and they sang their dreadful song:
Stoffonians: You will kneel before the Emporer,
surrender to our might.
You will pray to Holy Ristkon
and Great Parkep day and night.
You will see that it is better
to have us rule you than to be
the silly little savages
you seem to be today.
You will work for us with pleasure
and be happy you're alive
you will give your sons for labor
and your daughters for our wives.
--- The Cubes to the Rescue ---
Scientist: We had almost given up all hope
The evil Empire simply seemed too strong
Chorus: but they never counted on the cubes
the cubes somehow could not let us be harmed
Scientist: First the bar it held their forces back
they pounded it with laser beams and bombs
Chorus: the laser beams just bounced back into space
the gamma bombs went off without a sound
Scientist: The Cubes piled into giant growing stalks
until their tops were high above the bar
Chorus: one will never be the same again
after one has seen the Cubes make war.
Scientist: The aliens they fired upon the Cubes
The Cubes were knocked about but still intact
Chorus: piled upon the bar up in the sky
the glowing cubes prepared for their attack
Scientist: The light we saw was brighter than the sunshine
the fleet was decimated but for one -
Chorus: a shuttle craft it limped back home to Ristkon
and the skies of earth were peaceful once again.
--- The Bar is Crossed ---
Chorus: Cubes, Cubes, wonderful Cubes
Cubes, Cubes, beatiful Cubes
Scientist: I have found the secret now
I know what goes round
We've all seen so many things
but this makes it profound.
The iron rules of logic are
what makes the bar hold fast.
Think of only math and science
and then only may you pass
The Stoffonians were beaten
because they never freed their minds
they thought of myths and demons
even in their starships fine.
Chorus: Cubes, Cubes, wonderful Cubes
Cubes, Cubes, beatiful Cubes
Scientist: The Bar shall no more hold us
but it will protect us ever more
and when we travel to the stars
with us the Cubes will go.
We will build our own starships
and travel past the skies.
To find new worlds for our people
with the Cubes there by our side.
And the Stofonians won't harm us
for the shuttle craft that flew
and made it back to Ristkon
carried seeds from which Cubes grow.
Chorus: Cubes, Cubes, wonderful Cubes
Cubes, Cubes, beautiful Cubes
--- End ---
Rhubarb
I have recently gotten rid of almost all of my home recorded cassette tapes. Gone are all the crappy 4-track projects left unfinished. Gone also are the cassette versions of Flvxxvm Florvm, now the CDs and MP3s are all there is. Gone are my poorly executed attempts at performing my opus, "Coming of the Cubes". It now lives only in my head and awaits its eventual realization.
I only saved two tapes. One is a tape I made when I was about 8 years old, of my grandfather speaking. I plan to make it available online as a resource for linguists and anyone else who wants to know what a man born in Bayou La Batre, Alabama in 1913 and lived there all his life talked like.
The other is tape recorded April 29, 1997 at the studios of WVUA at the University of Alabama. This tape features me, Will Richardson (who instigated the whole thing), and Cliff Miller jamming on three songs, two of which I had already written and one of which was just sort of made up on the spot.
The first song, which I tentatively called "Rhubarb", I have just digitized and put online here (mp3 link). I named it after a painting I did when I was in high school that won the school art fair. It was a picture of a kid hunting with his dog. The dog's name was Rhubard. It was the first in series of paintings in which the kid grows up and eventually goes off to fight in a war that looked sort of like World War One but apparently didn't involve any actual nations of the real world. Anyway, I later realized that it was a good fit for these lyrics:
So whether you want to sing those lyrics to it, or just picture it playing in the background while a dying soldier remembers his childhood companion on the fields of some place that is almost but not quite like Flanders, here it is in all it's sad, sad, wah-wah wallowing glory.
The second song we recorded was what wound up on Flvxxvm Flrovm is the Devil under the titles of either "Coming of the Cubes", "Coming of the Cubes Parts 4 and 5", or "Cubic Jam", depending on whether you trust the cassette's label, the CD label, or the MP3 file names for the titles. As the titles indicate, this is an improvization based on a couple of the sections from Coming of the Cubes. It is not to be confused with the yet-to-be-actualized work itself. Here it is from the Flvxxvm Florvm archives.
The third song was a sort of half-blues/half-reggae thing in which I kept messing up the vibe that Will and Cliff had going between them (they were together in Down Loa at the time). I will eventually put it online too, in the interests of full disclosure.
I only saved two tapes. One is a tape I made when I was about 8 years old, of my grandfather speaking. I plan to make it available online as a resource for linguists and anyone else who wants to know what a man born in Bayou La Batre, Alabama in 1913 and lived there all his life talked like.
The other is tape recorded April 29, 1997 at the studios of WVUA at the University of Alabama. This tape features me, Will Richardson (who instigated the whole thing), and Cliff Miller jamming on three songs, two of which I had already written and one of which was just sort of made up on the spot.
The first song, which I tentatively called "Rhubarb", I have just digitized and put online here (mp3 link). I named it after a painting I did when I was in high school that won the school art fair. It was a picture of a kid hunting with his dog. The dog's name was Rhubard. It was the first in series of paintings in which the kid grows up and eventually goes off to fight in a war that looked sort of like World War One but apparently didn't involve any actual nations of the real world. Anyway, I later realized that it was a good fit for these lyrics:
I crawled out from my pit today.
I crawled out from my pit to say..
hello! But you you did not give a shit.
So I went back down into my pit.
In my pit there is no pleasure.
In my pit there is no pain.
In my pit there is no sunshine.
In my pit there is no rain.
So whether you want to sing those lyrics to it, or just picture it playing in the background while a dying soldier remembers his childhood companion on the fields of some place that is almost but not quite like Flanders, here it is in all it's sad, sad, wah-wah wallowing glory.
The second song we recorded was what wound up on Flvxxvm Flrovm is the Devil under the titles of either "Coming of the Cubes", "Coming of the Cubes Parts 4 and 5", or "Cubic Jam", depending on whether you trust the cassette's label, the CD label, or the MP3 file names for the titles. As the titles indicate, this is an improvization based on a couple of the sections from Coming of the Cubes. It is not to be confused with the yet-to-be-actualized work itself. Here it is from the Flvxxvm Florvm archives.
The third song was a sort of half-blues/half-reggae thing in which I kept messing up the vibe that Will and Cliff had going between them (they were together in Down Loa at the time). I will eventually put it online too, in the interests of full disclosure.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Parosproxy.org - Web Application Security
(work related)
We wrote a program called "Paros" for people who need to evaluate the security of their web applications. It is free of charge and completely written in Java. Through Paros's proxy nature, all HTTP and HTTPS data between server and client, including cookies and form fields, can be intercepted and modified.
The History of Cabbage
Our common cabbage-like vegetables provide an excellent example of remarkable crop improvements that was accomplished by simple long-term selection with no real goal in mind, but simply by people growing those plants that had the features that they most desired.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Boing Boing: How the Interstates got their numbers
First it was thinking that they needed to define the term "1337" while expecting the reader to just know what a "mashup" was. Now this. Conclusive proof that BoingBoing serves a slightly different subset of geekdom than I'm used to.
Just wait till they unearth those super secret railroad rosters.
CoolGov uncovered this US Highway Administration document that explains the numbering scheme behind the US interstate highway system.
Just wait till they unearth those super secret railroad rosters.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Using the XML HTTP Request object
Internet Explorer on Windows, Konqueror, Safari on Mac OS-X and Mozilla on all platforms provide a method for client side javascript to make HTTP requests.
Sears/Kenmore HE4t Washers and Dryers
Is this an actual instance of 1337-speak creeping into product numbers?
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
J2EE: A Standard in Jeopardy? (SYS-CON)
by Keith Donald
(Novarese, etc: yes, this is "our" Keith Donald)
This is where our community must step in and set that manager straight. J2EE is not in a state of chaos. There are simply more good choices for J2EE infrastructure than ever before. And from what I've experienced, there are many more J2EE success stories. Second, these "alternative" frameworks absolutely do not "reinvent the wheel in open source." They all build on standard J2EE services to improve developer productivity; they are not replacements for the platform.
(Novarese, etc: yes, this is "our" Keith Donald)
Monday, January 03, 2005
I'm rich!
AdSense earnings report for this blog:
Date Activity Earnings Credits Charges Payments Nov 8, 2004 Content - Earnings Accrued During October $0.58 Payment Calculated Dec 6, 2004 Content - Earnings Accrued During November $1.07 Payment Calculated Total $1.65
Note: We will mail you a check for your account balance within 30 days of the end of every calendar month that your earnings amount to $100 or more.
Georgia Place-Names by Kenneth K. Krakow
The origin of the name of a county, town, river, or any geographical feature prominent enough to have
been given a name always excites the imagination of people who live in or around that community or place. But often it excites an outsider even more. Such is the case of Kenneth Kemler Krakow, a native of Iowa, who has been in Georgia for six years. During these years he has sought the origin of every place-name in this state.
I wonder if anybody's done one of these for Alabama.
Ken Krakow Photographer, Georgia Location, Commercial and editorial Photographer
"Location Corporate Industrial Commercial and Advertising photography since 1980"
Google Answers: Origin of "Beaver Ruin" in Atlanta, Georgia
Google Answers rocks!
